-a gift from the spirits, who loom large in
every aspect of Hmong life.
More than 120,000 Hmong refugees, Pop
told me, now depend upon American supplies
for survival. Most live in lowland jungle ghet
tos. They suffer from tropical diseases against
which their mountain-dwelling past provides
no immunity. With the Pathet Lao control
ling at least two-thirds of the land area, the
Hmong truly have no place to run.
For several reasons-including clan divi
sions and political rivalries that stemmed
from French colonial days-Hmong fought
on both sides in the struggle for nominally
neutral Laos. Some 100,000 cast their lot with
the Communist-led Pathet Lao; the remain
ing 250,000 sided with the pro-Western Royal
Lao Government forces.
30,000 Hmong Dead in 14-year War
In the late 1950's, when trouble loomed,
people like the superstitious old chief at Nam
Phet naturally looked to the spirit world for
help. Messianic myths spread through the
hills. One prophesied that Christ would come
to the Hmong in a jeep, wearing American
clothes and handing out modern weapons.
No savior came, but the weapons did.
The Soviet Union and China supplied the
Pathet Lao Hmong and the North Vietnam
ese reinforced them. The U. S. Central Intel
ligence Agency armed and advised a secret
army-mostly Hmong-that supported the
government. For 14 years warfare ebbed and
flowed through their homeland. In the end,
America's Hmong allies lost.
In the debris of defeat 30,000 Hmong lay
dead; the survivors had been driven from
their homes. In one province not a village
still stands. To translate the disaster into
American terms, imagine a holocaust that
wiped out 18,000,000 of us and forced the
remainder of the population to flee to Mexico.
"Toward the end, 10- and 12-year-olds
were sent out to fight," Pop Buell told me.
"They didn't live long enough to learn fear."
When I first met the Hmong 13 years ago,
they still lived in relative peace. The roadless
isolation of Laos's mountain jungles created
a cultural deep freeze where customs changed
slowly. A score of primitive peoples lived in
the foothills, but if you endured the climb to
the ridges and peaks above 5,000 feet, you
found only the "kings of the mountains"
the Hmong.
A few thousand feet of vertical movement
"Pocketa-pocketa" goes the umbrella for
a Hmong boy playing helicopter with his
mother's sunshade. Until the past few years,
umbrellas were one of the Hmong woman's
few store-bought luxuries. They remain her
basic cosmetic aid, since fair skin confers
status-especially over the darker Lao
Theung, whom the Hmong consider inferior.